My first book Writing Pirates: Vernacular Fiction and Oceans in Late Ming China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, June 2021) connects Chinese literary production to emerging discourses of pirates and the sea. In the late Ming dynasty, so-called “Japanese pirates” raided southeast coastal China, Hideyoshi invaded Korea, Europeans sailed for overseas territories, and Chinese maritime merchants and emigrants founded diaspora communities in Southeast Asia. Travel writings, histories, and fiction of the period jointly narrated pirates and China’s Orient in maritime Asia. I show that the late Ming discourses of pirates and the sea were fluid, ambivalent, and dialogical: they simultaneously entailed imperialistic and personal narratives of the “other:” foreigners, renegades, migrants, and marginalized authors. At the center of the discourses, early modern concepts of empire, race, and authenticity were intensively negotiated. Connecting late Ming literature to the global maritime world, Writing pirates expands current discussions of Chinese diaspora and debates on Sinophone language and identity.
Grants, Honors, and Awards have supported the book Writing Pirates along the way, from the very beginning of its conceptualization in graduate school to its final completion and publication: AAS Dissertation Workshop (2011), Nalanda Sriwijaya Centre Junior Research Fellowship (2011), SSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research (2013-2014), Harvard-Yenching Library Travel Grant (2017), UGA Faculty Research Grant (2018), UGA Willson Center Research Fellowship (2019), Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation For International Scholarly Exchange Scholar Grant (2019), UGA First book subvention Award (2019), the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation Publication Subvention Award (2020).
Book reviews
- “Writing Pirates is a thought-provoking and challenging book that makes a significant contribution to the fields of Chinese literature and history.”
—Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) - “…by drawing rich connections between fiction and a wide variety of other writings, Writing Pirates casts new light on the genre and the broader “discourse of pirates” running through it. It fuses historiography and the imagination of the other, opening the door for a range of further inquiries for scholars of late Ming literature and comparative early modernities alike.”
—The Journal of Asian Studies - “This is a promising and exciting book. Wang gives a solid and convincing portrayal of how Ming subjects, not just elites but also merchants and a wider segment of early modern Chinese society, saw themselves in relation to their empire, the tributary system, and the world beyond. She highlights the crucial role played by fiction writing on foreign adventures, marginal social figures such as pirates, and translation and transcription.”
—Xing Hang, Brandeis University - “Writing Pirates is unique in that it draws from Asian literary sources to position Asian piracy and Chinese diaspora communities as alternatives to imperial corruption. While most recent studies have addressed piracy as it relates to historical rebellion and terrorism, as a continuum of threats to land-based societies, Wang instead approaches positive focal era regional piracy as a form of agency challenging political corruption.”
—Kenneth Hall, Ball State University - “Writing Pirates is a bountiful and valuable treasure for any academic library where literature and piracy are popular fields of study. . .”
—Pirates and Privateers: The History of Maritime Piracy - “Readers do not need a background in Chinese history and literature to appreciate this study. Its major contribution might be in pushing scholars more familiar with maritime violence in other seas to break out of Eurocentric frameworks for thinking about early modern maritime imaginaries and the conquest of the sea.”–The Great Circle
- “The discussion of a vast range of sources allows Writing Pirates to address a variety of subjects, including race and ethnicity, loyalty and Confucian values, trade and the tributary system, marginal groups, languages and translations, the private and public spheres, publishing, authenticity, emotions, and women. The author demonstrates an impressive breadth of knowledge by engaging with the scholarly literature relevant to these subjects.”- Yiwen Li, Journal of Chinese History
Yuanfei Wang 